Miranda

Sacred Sister Miranda (ミランダ) of Mille Seseau is the final character to join the party in Legend of Dragoon. She replaces Shana in Disc 3 when the latter feels her Dragoon Spirit reject her as its host in the chamber of the Signet Sphere. Despite her abrasive personality, she is also a healer and tended to the sick and the wounded before she joined the party. She is the character of choice for using magic attack items since she and Shana have the highest Magic Attack of all the characters.

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Miranda has long golden blond hair with fringes in each sides and brown eyes. Like Dart, she wears a red headband but it contains copper-like outlines.

Her primary outfit consists of a red high-neck armor midriff with the same copper outlines with white and black striped long sleeved skintight short dress underneath with a red v-belt which tucked into her dress, and brown thigh-high boots with folded sleeves. Like Shana, she wields the bow and arrow during the battle and wears brown gloves with red and brown accents.

As a Dragoon, her appearance has a minor resemblance to Shirley's Dragoon form and as a contrast to Shana's.

She wears a white silver Dragoon armor with red outlines and at the back of her armor becomes backless, a matching white silver greaves which is connected to her armor, red and white silver upper sleeves in each side of her shoulder and an aqua blue gem at the center of her armor, black tights, a knee length white silver Dragoon armor boots with a red gem in the center and wields the bow and arrow which transforms into a Dragoon Bow in a silver motif. She also wears a long white silver armor gloves and wears a red orange dragon headband on her forehead. Her Dragoon wings is different than Shana's Dragoon wings as the color of her wings are a glowing yellow and white silver with red orange outlines.

In her in-game while in this form, her tights became dark gray and her Dragoon wings appear as pale gold and white silver with red orange outlines.

She is a solid, reliable companion, brave and dedicated to the defense of Deningrad. However, Miranda is a harsh taskmaster with her soldiers in Deningrad, and either utterly candid or terribly rude depending on the players viewpoint. From that, she has also been known to slap her fellow soldiers, even Rose. On one occasion she berates her guards for having let Lloyd past them, despite the party's prior assessment of Lloyd as being an unusually powerful opponent. Despite her hard as nails exterior, she has a tender heart when it comes to Queen Theresa and her fellow Sacred Sisters.

Miranda, like Shana, uses a bow, so the developers decided not allow her the ability to use additions either. Her regular attacks are the weakest of the party, as they are not enhanced by addition bonuses. This dissuades players from using her in combat; Mirana will gain XP from boss battles, but she does not need XP as much as the other characters, since she gains no additions for higher levels as they do. To a lesser extent, she also falls behind a little because the other characters have Additions that are specifically designed to gain SP at the cost of damage. But then, is that not the definition of Shana/Miranda? Because of her high speed stat and low attack stat, she can quickly attack a weak enemy multiple times, thus often gaining the most SP of any party member in a single battle.

The common wisdom that female characters all always have worse physical defense than male characters is almost completely subverted by Shana/Miranda and Dart at highest level: Dart has 150, Shana/Miranda 149, at level 60. Admittedly, most of the gains occur after level 40.

Speed is the one attribute that is affected only by items; never leveling. Shana's Speed, at 65, is tied with Miranda's for the second highest in the game. Her speed is lower than Meru's 70 but both her magical attack and defense are the best in the team and makes her the perfect magic defender. Her dragoon gives her more of a raise in her physical attributes but still makes her the deadliest magician on the team. She is weak to Darkness but thanks to her high magical defense it is less likely to cause fatal damage, unlike other party members.

Miranda will always be the exact same total of experience points and therefore level as Shana was when she left the party.

All character's maximum level is 60

All character's HP accelerates as they go up in levels; Miranda's, from an average of 24 HP for each of the first ten levels, to 100 HP each of the last ten

Speed is the one attribute that is affected only by items; never leveling. Miranda's Speed is 65

Miranda's base chance to hit with Physical attacks is 130% and with with Magical attacks, a base 100%

Miranda's base chance to Evade Physical and Magical attacks is a base 5%

Physical Attack (AT) starts out half of Rose's at 17 for the first ten levels, but increases to 1.75

Miranda gains Spirit Points (SP) from attacks automatically, and the number rises with her Dragoon Level. While initially the value is low, at Dragoon Level 5 she gains 150 SP per attack, making her a strategic healer who can quickly gain back DLVs in the middle of combat. Miranda may not even have to DLV up greatly because she receives Shana's spirit and stats.

The White Silver Dragoon Spirit's specialty is healing the party, as three of her four spells do. The White Silver Dragoon is a strong magic user, so the two offensive spells do quite a bit of damage. None of her healing spells duplicate those of the other healers, but are complementary. The fifth level spell, for example, both attacks and heals, without the amount healed being dependent on the damage done, as Rose's Astral Drain is.

Miranda gains as much from Dragoon form of any of the characters, and since she is commonly seen as weaker than they in normal form, this would be a net gain for her. The bonus of the Silver Dragoon changes Shana/Miranda's effectiveness at physical attacks considerably. Miranda at a mostly hypothetical level 10 would have 17 base attack: half that of Lavitz, and this even gets slightly worse at the highest levels. But in Dragoon form, when Lavitz gets between 150% and 170% stronger at physical attacks, while Shana/Miranda gets 200%-220% stronger, the difference drops to 50% more attack for Lavitz at Dragoon Level 1, with the difference climbing slightly at higher Dragoon levels. Obviously, her magical damage more than makes up for her lack of physical damage; her Magic Attack stat is even higher than Lavitz' Physical attack stat. It should be noted that Dragoon form has exactly the same effect on Lavitz' magic attack as on Shana/Miranda's physical attack; Lavitz gets between 200% and 220% stronger at magic, while Shana/Miranda gets 150%-170% stronger.

With no additions, the SP she gains with each attack is utterly dependent on her Dragoon Level. One certain fact and two less certain strategies arise from this: One, level matters much less to Shana. When she might be most needed, in boss battles, she would be gaining XP that her development requires less than other characters'. Two, and partially pursuing one, players can raise her DL up as soon as possible, when enemies give less XP and are less of a threat. Or Three, players can wait until the entire array of Spirit-gaining and Speed-enhancing equipment is available; this minimizes the amount of time spent getting Dragoon levels, and also "saves" Miranda for when she would be most needed, at the end game bosses.

In order to DLV up quickly, she is best equipped with accessories that can help her gain SP such as the Spirit Ring (because of her high speed, at 20 Sp per turn, it can be very helpful); of course the Wargod's Sash, giving 50% more SP per attack, is wonderful for any character. Speaking of quickly, the Dancer's Shoes and Dancer's Ring and can each add about a third to her already high Speed, and the Speed Up item, because it multiplies the existing Speed rather than adding a set amount, gets its maximum effectiveness with her.

The Death Frontier does not have random battles; instead making contact with monsters on the map initiates battle. Monsters respawn again after each battle (except for Cactus, which requires a screen change). This area is recommended for power-leveling, and in particular is good for Miranda's D-Level (especially if you've neglected using her or Shana because of their lack of Additions), as Sandworms often enough appear alone and can take a lot of abuse. By equipping her with the Arrow of Force from Ulara and the Wargod's Sash from turning in Stardust, you can vastly increase the SP she gains with each shot. Combined with the Dancer's Shoes, Speed Up, Speed Down, and Magic Signet Stone to maximize her speed (without losing SP per hit) and minimize the Sandworm's actions, she can easily reap SP in the thousands from a single battle if she is the only one attacking, though it is advisable to finish the fight as soon as the Speed Down and Magic Signet Stone lapse, even if it means attacking with someone else.

Miranda was born in the northern country of Mille Seseau. Her mother named her after a goddess of the same name and was proud of her child. However, her mother was not suited to the life of a housewife while her father was a lazy, unemployed, alcoholic who had a bad habit of drinking away all the money Miranda's mother made. This frustration led her to abuse Miranda before she eventually abandoned Miranda and her husband for a new life with another man. This loss affected Miranda greatly, but instead of becoming over emotional, she started to lock her emotions suppressing the issue deep within herself. Eventually her father died leaving her an orphan with nothing. She spent a lot of time at Kashua Glacier to contemplate her troubled past in solitude.

She reveals in disk 4, that she hates roses because when her mother was "hurting her" there were roses in the background. She claimed that roses got their red from the blood of others, and were disgusting things.

When Miranda is Dispirited, she slouches forward while standing and moves her head in a dizzy motion.

When Blocking, Miranda holds her bow horizontally in front of her face.

When in Critical Health, Miranda stands leaning forward while holding her stomach with her right hand.

Miranda has two idle poses; her first has her putting her right hand on her hip and leaning slightly, her second has her stand perfectly straight while crossing her arms.

Unlike her predecessors Shirley and Shana, Miranda's Dragoon armor shape is completely different. It may be possible due to the fact that Shana and Shirley were younger than Miranda when the White-Silver Dragoon chose them. This may have caused Miranda's armor shape to adjust to her more mature and serious personality.